"Something like that will gestate, I'm sure. I would like to end it in New York, where we started. To go full circle."

Just like the first movie, Keanu has put in A LOT of effort when it comes to perfecting the many action scenes in the second film. And Stahelski said that Keanu wouldn't have allowed it any other way.

"Keanu's not just doing it because he loves action, it's because that's what the character demands. Keanu will say, 'If this is supposed to be the world's greatest assassin, you can't talk about it, we need to show the audience that I am the world's best'.

"Believability is the honesty of the character. Jackie Chan doesn't need the scene where you say how good he is, you just f**king see it. That's Keanu. Keanu would say, 'No-one's gonna believe the fairytale. You've just gotta f**king see it'."

The filmmaker also explained how making a second film was much more of a challenge now that fans were expecting something even better.

"It's kind of like lightning in a bottle. The first one did really well, and we thought no-one would see it. I love working with Keanu, I've known him forever. We made a movie that we wanted to see, a total 'genre f**k you, we're gonna do what we want to do' thing, it doesn't matter how weird it gets. No limitations, we'll just do what we thought was right.

"And you do that and you go, 'Oh, now we have to make another one'. They call it the curse of the sequel. In my mind, I don't know if you'd call Empire Strikes Back a sequel, I think it was more of a continuation. So we tried to take that mentality, let's not do a sequel, let's just do a continuation of story. Originality happens once. And the rest is, 'What do you do?'

"There were several times when we were like, 'F**k, we're gonna get nailed for this'. You start thinking about letting fans down, letting yourself down. We got really consumed with that for a little bit. We don't like shitty sequels, we're audience members just like you guys.

"You sit in that room one day and we've had every bad plot idea you can imagine for John Wick 2. Another dog, saves this, does this, it got bad. One day, Keanu walks in and goes, 'What are you stressing about?' He was like, 'What did you love about the first one? Just write about that'."

Talking about his other inspirations, he added: "I love what James Cameron did with Aliens, I don't consider that a sequel either. It's a continuation. Ridley Scott did a sci-fi thriller, James Cameron did a sci-fi action movie. You didn't laugh at all in the first one, you were terrified. And you were laughing every minute in the second with Bill Paxton, he was f**king great.

"Cameron took Ridley Scott and actually made it better in a different way. I don't think you can compare either movie like you can with most sequels. They are two completely different movies, and I think that's a genius idea. So we tried to continue in that vein. I'm not comparing myself to Ridley Scott or James Cameron!"

John Wick: Chapter 2 is released in UK cinemas on Friday, February 17.